


death at one's elbow

by oryx



Category: Kamen Rider Amazons (2016)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-27
Updated: 2016-08-27
Packaged: 2018-08-11 10:43:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7888141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oryx/pseuds/oryx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An ill-fated romance, from beginning to end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	death at one's elbow

He’s nervous on that first day.  
   
He supposes it’s only natural. Answering some suspicious online ad promising “quick, generous payment” in exchange for “work of a delicate nature” would put anyone on edge. Potentially life-threatening, too, the man on the phone had clarified, throwing it out there like an afterthought only _after_ Jun had accepted the gig. “Exterminating insects? How life-threatening could that possibly be?” he’d asked, and received an unnerving kind of silence in return.  
   
Well, whatever, he thinks. The possibility of death almost seems preferable when he thinks about the suffocating weight of his student loans. If this is what he has to do, then so be it.  
   
The exterior of the building is dingy and grey. The interior isn’t much better, the rooms lived-in in the most haphazard and unclean manner imaginable. A handsome older man with sharp, tired eyes gives him an uninterested once-over from where he’s seated on the floor.  
   
“So you’re the new guy, then?” he says. “Welcome aboard.”  
   
In the corner, another man glances up from his book before going back to it without a word.  
   
“… Nice to meet you,” Jun says, soldiering on regardless. “I’m – ”  
   
“Maehara Jun,” the third guy says. He’s been standing there trawling through his tablet since Jun walked in the door, and so Jun had taken him for yet another unsociable type. But suddenly he’s smiling – genuinely, warmly – and holding out a hand for Jun to shake.  
   
“I’m Otaki,” he says. “This here is Shido-san, and that’s Fukuda-san over there. Pretty impressive file you’ve got here. With a degree like that you should be living it up, not slumming it with us Pest Control guys.” He nods to himself. “You know I tried college myself once, but,” and here he makes a nebulous hand gesture, “didn’t really work out so great. If you know what I mean.”  
   
He laughs, eyes crinkling at the corners, a flash of endearingly crooked teeth, and Jun stares at him.  
   
_Ah,_ he thinks. _He’s so bright._  
   
The only bright thing in this place.  
   
(That’s how it starts.)  
   
  
   
  
   
This, it turns out, is a little more than just “exterminating insects.”  
   
He tries not to think about it too much. The fact that these things were once human. The fact that there are apparently _thousands_ of them in this city, indistinguishable from your friends and your neighbors until one day they just snap, just like that, and suddenly there’s nothing left of them but an all-consuming hunger –  
   
Those are the thoughts he tries his best to push aside.  
   
Instead, he worries about how desperate Nozama must truly be, to hire someone like him. He’s physically strong, of course – played a lot of sports in school, including a long stint in the archery club.  
   
But shooting a bow and arrow is a very different animal than shooting a gun.  
   
Fukuda has to teach him how, down in the basement of the Inoue Building, while Shido sits on the concrete steps drinking a beer and shaking his head. (“Some real gold star recruits they’re sending us, huh?”)  
   
Even after he gets the hang of it, it still doesn’t feel quite right. The metal of it fits all wrong into his hand, too heavy and too strange, the acrid smell when he fires it lying low in the back of his throat. The other new addition, Takai, seems to be in the same boat as he is. It seems like madness at first glance, trying to fight those monsters up close with knives and fists. But maybe, he thinks, as his fingers sting from the gun’s backlash and he watches today’s hunt melt away into a tar-like oil slick… Maybe a part of him gets it, too.  
   
In close quarters, killing something feels a little less impersonal.  
   
A month in and he wonders why it was so easy, to accept these bizarre circumstances as his everyday life. His new normal. He sits at the table, body aching from the beating he took yesterday, and finds his mind wandering to the strangeness of all of this.  
   
But then someone’s knee bumps against his own – Otaki settling in next to him, eyes bright as he asks him if he wants to bet on the baseball game they’re watching on the staticky old TV (“are you a Tigers fan? you seem like you would be”). He procures a box of something that turns out to be manju from beneath his jacket and slides it towards Jun.  
   
“Want one?” He bites into one himself with a thoughtful ‘hmm.’ “Probably shouldn’t be buying anything extra this month, things are pretty tight, but – you know how it is.” Jun has noticed that he seems to have a bit of a sweet tooth. “Y’sure you don’t want to bet? Not even a few hundred?”  
   
Jun can feel a faint smile tugging at his mouth. “I’ll bet you another box of these,” he says, pointing to the manju, “that the Tigers win this one.”  
   
Otaki grins. “Alright. You’re on.”  
   
It’s not until the last inning is over and the Tigers have sorely lost that Jun remembers where he is, and what he’s doing, and the awful, ear-piercing screech their last hunt had let out when he’d lifted his gun with steady hands and shot it clean between the eyes.  
   
  
   
  
   
The weather begins to turn cold, and they all take to sleeping in the training room with their feet under the kotatsu. Jun wonders if it’s just coincidence that his often end up entangled with Otaki’s.  
   
“Why are you doing this?” he asks one night, once he’s relatively certain that the others are asleep. The dim glow of Otaki’s tablet as he scrolls mindlessly through today’s data is the only light in the room, and in this strange, lonely atmosphere Jun can feel all the words that he’s been keeping locked up rushing suddenly to the surface. “I mean, I have loans to pay off but I – I’m not so sure anymore. There has to be something easier than this, right? Even if the pay is good, I just… I don’t know how long I can do this, Otaki-san. Is it even worth it? I could die any day now. And for what? Just to pay back my college debt? What the hell kind of death is that?”  
   
Otaki lies there in silence for a moment, then rolls on to his side to look at him. Jun realizes with a start just how close they are to each other – close enough that he can make out Otaki’s thoughtful expression even in the darkness.  
   
“Do you hate this job?” he asks.  
   
“I,” Jun says, and pauses. “I don’t know?”  
   
Otaki nods. “ _I_ hate this job,” he says. There’s no anger or bitterness in his voice as he says it – only a kind of quiet resignation. “I hate seeing them. Those things. I hate how they’re all the same. They probably used to be interesting people once, don’t you think? They probably had things they wanted, things they were worried about. But as soon as they change, it’s like none of that matters anymore.  
   
“But I like the strategy,” he continues. “I like planning out each hunt – imagining what the enemy will do before they do it. And… I like the people who work here.”  
   
He’s staring intently at Jun as he says this, smiling despite his somber tone a few moments ago, and Jun feels as if something has just wound its way around his chest and squeezed very tight.  
   
“Yeah,” he says. “I do, too.”  
   
  
   
  
   
Their encounter with their very first Rank B does not go smoothly.  
   
By the time Shido announces “the target is neutralized” over the headset – taken out by one last expert sniper shot from Fuku – Jun and Otaki are both breathing heavily and more than a little worse for the wear. There’s a deep gash gouged into Jun’s forearm and a chunk missing from Otaki’s ear, the blood matting his hair and trickling down the side of his neck, but for Jun at least the adrenaline is still keeping the pain at bay, and he leans back with a shaky sigh of relief, resting against the crates they’d been using as cover. He takes off his helmet as the two of them glance over at each other.  
   
“They’ll _have_ to give us a raise after this,” Otaki says with a grin, and despite the blood dripping from steadily his chin Jun doesn’t think he’s ever seen a better expression.  
   
“Absolutely,” Jun laughs, and leans in to kiss him.  
   
For a moment, Otaki goes very still, and Jun thinks, in this split second of panic, that he might have been mistaken. That all this time he’s been misinterpreting the signs. Merely inventing himself a happy ideal to cling to.  
   
But then Otaki is smiling against his lips and his hand is curling into the fabric of his uniform, tugging him closer, and it feels a bit like “finally.”  
   
It’s a week later when they kiss again, and once more, Jun is bleeding. Not from a hunt this time, but from the new recruit, Misaki, who had accidentally whacked him in the face with the barrel of his shotgun during a training drill. Otaki laughs (not unkindly) as he and Jun sit on the basement steps, passing a beer back and forth between them. Jun’s bottom lip is swollen and split in at least two places. He keeps running his tongue over it and tasting the salty tang of blood.  
   
“You’re not very lucky, are you?” Otaki muses aloud, an amused kind of warmth to his voice.  
   
Jun touches his bruised face tenderly. “I wouldn’t be here if I was.” He hesitates for a moment before adding: “I wish we could’ve met somewhere else.”  
   
Otaki hums thoughtfully. “But then it wouldn’t have been the same, would it?” he says in that inscrutable way of his, his smile never faltering, as he leans in to press their lips together.  
   
It’s like sinking into warmth – for a moment, at least, until Otaki’s teeth catch on his split lip and he feels the sting of blood seeping up once more through the skin. Jun pulls away from him with a wince and a faint, apologetic laugh.  
   
He expects Otaki to be laughing, too.  
   
But instead there is an odd expression on his face. Disquieted and on-edge, without any trace of his usual calm. In this moment he looks like a stranger. He licks his lips and his eyes go wide and dark with something almost like longing, like hunger, and his fingers are digging painfully sharp into flesh of Jun’s forearm, and Jun can feel a shiver work its way down the length of his spine –  
   
“Otaki-san?” he says.  
   
And just like that the moment is over as quick as it had came, and Otaki is shaking his head as if to clear his thoughts, getting to his feet with a tight-lipped smile.  
   
“Let’s head back upstairs,” he says, and Jun watches him as he walks away, heart in his throat, wondering exactly what it was he’d been anticipating.  
   
  
   
  
   
   
When Mamoru arrives, something in Ryusuke seems to change.  
   
“Why’re you always watching him like that?” Jun asks. They’re alone in the training room this evening – Ryusuke holding the targets for him while he jabs with a left straight and a right hook. He’s not sure if he could ever hunt vermin like Takai does, but it certainly doesn’t hurt to be prepared. “Do you not trust him?”  
   
Ryusuke shakes his head. “That’s not it,” he says. “I’m just… curious, I guess? About what makes him different. If he can change his form and still retain his sense his self, then maybe…”  
   
His words trail off into contemplative silence.  
   
_Maybe what?_ Jun wants to ask, but somehow he already knows that he won’t get an answer – just an evasive quirk of the lips and a change of subject. There are days when he wants to reach out and shake Ryusuke by the shoulders, when he wants to scream _what aren’t you telling me?_ at the top of his lungs, and yet he knows that it would be unfair.  
   
Nobody here is without their secrets, after all.  
   
Ryusuke closes the distance between himself and Mamoru after that day in the training room. He starts joking with him and laughing with him just like Misaki does, clapping him on the back with unrestrained enthusiasm after hunts gone well. But even so, Jun still catches him watching Mamoru out of the corner of his eye sometimes, pensive and distant and somehow unbearably sad, like he’s searching for an answer to a question he knows is unanswerable.  
   
  
   
  
   
( _So that’s why_ , Jun thinks, as tears sting his eyes and his vision blurs, distorting the image of the creature with the bulbous eyes and the translucent wings and the sharp, chittering teeth. The thing that can no longer understand his words. The thing that used to be Ryusuke.  
   
So that’s why.)  
   
  
   
  


  
   
When he opens his eyes, they tell him that he died.  
   
He supposes it must be true. His limbs move like mechanical parts now, and his heartbeat is still and silent in his chest, and he cannot feel the metal of the operating table beneath his skin. His body seems hollow, almost, like a doll’s, like the shell of a cicada left clinging to a branch, and he thinks it would be unsettling if he still knew the meaning of that word.  
   
They tell him he was brought back to fight, to “collect data through combat,” and he smiles a bit at that.  
   
That, at least, feels right.  
   
Sigma remembers Alpha. He’s the one who hunted Ryusuke down – who got to him first, even though it should have been them. He’s the one who stood there on the sidelines and watched (as if it were some kind of spectacle) while Ryusuke lost the last traces of himself.  
   
Well, Sigma thinks, with a hint of wry amusement. Not as if any of that matters to him anymore. Those old feelings are just that – memories left over from a different time. They belonged to a person who’s dead and gone now.  
   
_But maybe_ , he thinks, as he stands there across from Alpha and twists the handle of the belt, as the steam envelops him and the plated armor grows and stretches across his skin, as he trails a claw along his abdomen, tracing the long, jagged scar from where Ryusuke’s teeth tore into his flesh.  
   
Maybe he’ll give Alpha a scar to match.


End file.
